Beatbox Without Borders: How Can Beatboxing and Vocal Mimicry Be Used as Tools for Healing and Transformation?

INTRODUCTION:

How Can Beatboxing and Vocal Mimicry Be Used as Tools for Healing and Transformation?

This question has been at the center of my own journey as a global citizen, a musician, a healer, and a changemaker. I just arrived in Nepal to begin my second official Beatbox Without Borders journey, supported partially by Schools Without Borders. The journey will take me from Nepal to India, Laos and Australia. This journey will be documented both through writing (using this platform) and through Youtube Episodes on the Beatbox Without Borders Channel. This journey is a story in itself, or more specifically a series of stories (narratives, if you will), unfolding as I travel, eat, and collaborate, talk and be with other beatboxers, musicians, seekers, shaman, yogis, fakirs, juveniles, shop keepers, chai wallas, random people, God, and as I search for questions, answers and connections between beatboxing, vocal mimicry, music, disease, medicine, sound, renewable energy, healing, individual and social transformation, spirituality and international development.

It is also a story about me as a unique person in the world, a global citizen, an Indian born Australian American, a sound-scaping vagabond, a third culture kid, a cultural chameleon, a post-modern bohemian, and a professional of course.

It is a story about me loosing myself and finding myself again, like a sound Jogi, a Fakir, a Shiva Nataraj, a whirling Dervish, dancing and spinning in the cycles of union and separation, of outer and inner harmony, the music of the spheres, like a sonic shape shifter in this comsic Kali-(eye)-discope of Be-ing, and Do-ing and of Me-ing, and You-ing.

It is a story of me loosing myself and finding myself again. A story about how chronic lyme disease forced me to loose myself, but beatboxing helped me find myself again, and heal myself, and how these things, and a variety of other transient international travel experiences, put me on a path towards trying to understand how humanly produced sound is capable of creating a better people and a better world.

It is a story about learning how other societies and traditions, and other practices like throat-singing, naad (sound) and (pranayama yoga), shamanic breath work, animal mimicry, butoh, and expressive arts therapy, has informed my practice and can inform yours.

It is a story about the beauty but also the limits of spoken language, a story of communication beyond words. It is a story of creating a world, which I call the SOUNDATION! A world where we are opened and aware of our sonic potential in its most awesome capacity.

But what does all this even mean? What the hell am I actually talking about? Is it all just a buzz-word cacophany? Some kind of iterative self embellishment? It could be way more than that. Let’s step back a minute and clarify some terminology and some history about beatboxing, and vocal mimicry, and my very interesting story. Stay tuned or Chapter 1.